


Peace and Peace

by Tonight_At_Noon



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fluff without Plot, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), bucky needs cheering up and darcy is there to help
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 18:26:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19447069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tonight_At_Noon/pseuds/Tonight_At_Noon
Summary: Darcy shows up at the Avengers' new compound, and Bucky is partway convinced she is only there to spy on him.





	Peace and Peace

**Author's Note:**

> Back to regularly scheduled programming.

**.**

_give me something to hold onto_

_i've got nothing since i lost you_

"Give Me Something" | Seafret

**.**

Thor's friend watches him from across the room. She holds a book up - a thick copy of _War and Peace_ \- so that it covers half of her face, but she isn't reading. He knows this because her eyes are on him. Not the page she randomly opened to when she sat down, which she hasn't flipped over since. Bucky has been ignoring her for at least ten minutes. Ten minutes which feel like ten hours, as his brain has trouble focusing on time at the moment. It either crawls forward at a snail's pace or zips as fast as a cheetah. Today, right now, the seconds crawl. And he isn't stupid. He knows why she's looking at him. But it's making him uncomfortable. His skin itches. He can't help but feel as though he is the one who has travelled back in time to return to life as the Winter Soldier. He feels trapped in a mission. A mission involving his position being compromised.

And a compromised position means extra casualties.

Why won't she stop looking at him with those bug eyes of hers? Is she afraid he's going to snap? Is that why she is here in the first place? Did Thor call in a favour? Or was it the European doctor who seems to know her as well?

Bucky stares back. He's too tired to pretend he isn't also watching her. Her name is Darcy. He knows that much. She was involved with SHIELD before it fell to pieces as HYDRA slipped through its cracks. As for what she's been doing since, he isn't quite sure. Though he thinks she was taken by the Decimation, so that would account for her whereabouts the last five years. And she knows Thor. She keeps saying it. Reminding them. He thinks she came here hoping to see him, but he left long ago with the modified rat and his space buddies.

She said it when she first got here: _I know Thor, it's okay. He told me it was okay_.

And when he expressed his skepticism, she pulled her phone out and showed him a photograph of the two of them in some desert drowning in coffee.

And even though Thor isn't here, the doctor is, and that's been enough to keep her around all day. Except she's spent hardly any time with the rotund doctor. Instead, she's been tracking him like some rogue agent.He isn't really afraid of her, though. Not of her ability, or lack thereof, to harm him like one of his old adversaries.

He is, however, afraid of her eyes. The way they seem to bore into his each time their gazes lock. It's as if she can see directly into his mind. As if she understands everything about him.

It's unnerving to spend so much of his life hiding from the world to end up being caught out by a random woman who'd really, really make a terrible spy.

At least she's pretty.

"I'm sorry," she blurts suddenly, snapping Tolstoy shut and rising to her feet. He thinks she's about to run out of the room, but she just stands there, frozen.

Then she sits back down, as if surprised by her own bravery. She frowns at him. Or, she frowns in his general direction.

Bucky stares at her, waiting.

"Sorry...?" he supplies, because he can't help himself. This is almost amusing. Almost. It would be amusing if he weren't so damn sad.

"No, you see," she says, clutching the book to her chest and avoiding his eye-line, "I was told not to talk to you."

Bucky could laugh. He does, a little. And it startles her as much as it startles him.

Is that why people have been avoiding him?

Who is it going around the place, ordering people to not speak to him?

"But you're sorry about something," he says. She nods, her mouth remaining shut. "If I give you permission to speak, will you?"

She looks at him questioningly.

"Okay, I'm giving you permission to speak." This is ridiculous. He feels like a schoolteacher.

Darcy relaxes a little bit. "The sorry," she says, "was about, well, about Captain America."

And it all comes out.

"But then I remembered I wasn't supposed to say anything to you, especially about that, so, now I'm saying sorry for mentioning him. Sorry."

Bucky leans back in the plush leather chair, his throat suddenly sore. Sore in the way it used to get when the scientists were busy erasing his memories. When he would scream and scream and scream.

But this hurts more. It's the ache of loss. Because Steve is here, in this world, but he isn't the Steve he once knew. This Steve turned his back on everything they had worked to build.

This Steve doesn't want to be involved in this life. It's why the bird has his shield. Why Bucky is alone.

Alone except for the teary eyed woman in front of him. She swims before him, and it takes a moment for him to realise it's because his eyes have also filled with tears. He rubs his face to stop them from spilling over, and when he looks at her again, her face is wet.

"I also was told not to cry," she says, wiping her cheek, "but that was asking too much of me."

He laughs. Again. The second time in less than five minutes. Of course, it's strangled and sounds painful, but it bursts out of him all the same. Because Darcy said something, and even in his haze he knew it was funny.

"It's okay," he says. "Both the tears and talking about Steve."

"Really? Because I can totally leave if I'm bumming you out. I'm bumming me out, so it's really not a big deal."

"You talk a lot," he says.

A pink stripe of embarrassment streaks across both of her cheeks. "Yeah. When I stopped working for SHIELD, they were really worried I was going to spill all their secrets."

"Did you?"

She shakes her head. "Not that it mattered. Everything got out in the end with no help from me."

"True," he acknowledges. He knows he was involved in that information leak. Somehow. The edges of those memories are still fuzzy. "I'm surprised you made it as far as you did."

"What do you mean?" she asks defensively.

Bucky quickly finds something to say to explain himself. "I only mean that I'm surprised you didn't talk to me for, what, fifteen minutes?"

She relaxes. He does too.

"Oh. That. Yeah," she says, "I wanted to open my mouth the moment I walked in here. You looked so depressed."

"Did I?" Here he was, thinking he had everyone fooled. But if untrained, emotional Darcy can see through him, everyone else definitely can too.

"Oh, yeah. Super sad and morose. Which makes sense, if you think about it."

He doesn't want to think about it, but she's right. "So," he says, "do I not look depressed anymore?"

Darcy observes him intently, leaning forward in her chair so far the Tolstoy falls to the ground with a loud smack. She jumps, hitting her head on the chair. She rubs the back of her head and squints in pain.

He has to physically restrain himself from laughing.

"No," she says eventually. "Now you look like you're stopping yourself from laughing at my suaveness."

Bucky loses it then. He splits open, laughing for a solid eight seconds before he regains his composure.

It's funny. He doesn't feel as empty as before. Before she sat there. Before she opened her mouth. It's like she's feeding him. Filling him up.

"How long are you staying?" he asks before he can stop the question from coming out.

Darcy pulls her phone from beneath her thigh and stares at the screen. She looks up at him. "A few more hours."

Good, he thinks. A few more hours is good.


End file.
